Page 18 of A Billionaire Gentleman

I quickly finished fastening the annoying row of buttons that held together the front of my top. I doubted Pasha needed back-up, but she’d been such a big help to me that I’d feel awful if I wasn’t at least close enough to hear her if she needed someone.

My good intentions, however, didn’t take me far. Sanders had planted himself nearby, arms crossed and a scowl on his face. Judging from the direction in which he was glaring, his anger was directed at the tall blonde next to Pasha.

He paused from his glowering to give me a glance. “Sofi, you have a customer who wants a private dance. I put him in room two. He didn’t make any special costume requests.”

Dammit. I definitely would’ve preferred being out there for Pasha than doing a dance for some creep, but at least I’d figured out the trick for handling these sorts of customers.

I’d spent a lot of my marriage pretending to be someone I wasn’t, whether it was a simpering, placating version of myself, or the calm, cool me who pretended like everything was just fine. I’d simply needed to create a persona who was confident and sexy, able to seduce men with a smile and a wink.

I shrugged that person into place and then stepped into the room, ready to field whatever came my way…

“If you’d been a little more like this in the bedroom, maybe I wouldn’t have had to go somewhere else for some decent cunt.”

Shock paralyzed me even as my pulse and blood pressure rocketed.

This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be here. This was a nightmare. I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t real. I needed to wake up.

Wake up!

“Surprised to see me, honey?” Mead lounged in the seat across from the door, his arms stretched out along the back of the bench and his legs set wide, everything about the picture familiar even as my brain struggled to process the fact that he was here.

No.

No!

We weren’t hidden away in our house where he ruled with an iron fist. This might not have been the job I’d always wanted, or even a job I really liked, but it wasmyjob, and I was through letting him take things from me.

“Do you have a specific song you’d like me to dance to?” I asked between gritted teeth.

He stood, and it took everything in me to stop from taking a step backward. Adrenaline rushed through me as flight warred with fight. I couldn’t do either, but I could stand my ground.

“What’s the dirtiest, filthiest song you’ve got?” He moved toward me until we were only a couple inches apart, my heels allowing me to look down on him for the first time in my life.

He didn’t like that.

Quicker than a man his size should have been able to move, his hand wrapped around the back of my neck, and he sent me flying into the bench. I landed on my knees, the pain jarring up through my body. My stomach hit the edge of the bench, and I gasped, the air knocked out of me.

Before I could even think of how to get away, he was on me. His fingers dug into the back of my neck as he shoved my face against the seat of the bench. I braced myself for the blows I was sure would be coming, but it wasn’t until he kicked apart my ankles that I realized he didn’t want to hit me. Not yet, anyway.

“How many men have you fucked here,wife? Made yourself a nice little whore, haven’t you?” He snarled at me, blunt fingers grabbing at the back of my costume.

For the first time, I was grateful for all of the little hooks and buttons that kept this particular outfit together. It was the hardest one to remove, and I usually cursed it, but I never would again.

“I’m going to scream, Mead.” I tried for threatening, but the words had no strength.

“Oh, I have no doubt about that,” he snarled, his breath hot against my ear. “I’m going to fuck your ass until you bleed and then make you gag on my cock.”

“I mean it!” I tried to throw him off, but I didn’t have the leverage. “I’ll scream, and someone will come!”

“No, my little whore wife. You’re not going to scream. You’re going to let me do whatever I want to do to you. For free. And you’re going to keep letting me do it, or I’m going to make sure that stuck-up bitch of a caseworker knows exactly what you do to pay for that apartment of yours. Her, my lawyer, the judge. Everyone.”

I stifled a sob. He’d do it, if for no other reason than to prove he could. He might even do it if I let him do whatever he wanted to do to me, but giving in was the only glimmer of hope I had.

How fucked up was my life that beingrapedwas my best hope?

“Cry all you want.” His breath was hot against my cheek. “I like it when you cry.”

I closed my eyes and told myself that I could survive this too.

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